I was posted in Tajpur village in Midnapore. I had a cottage of my own courtesy to my services as a Resident Doctor to the Majna Hospital. The area was quite remote, far from my railway station and almost an hour by a two wheeler to Digha. The small town with the colours and smells of rural Bengal, was an outpost of civilization, in which primitive manners and customs and old-world tradition linger on into an age that has elsewhere forgotten them. During the vacations of winter and Puja, it is true, a small contingent of visitors, adventurous in spirit, make their appearance to swell its meagre population, and impart to the wide stretches of smooth sand that fringe its shores a fleeting air of life and cherfulness. In late September—the climate turned temperate and the sea carried a bright Prussian hue—the farm-lands covered by the early morning dew maintained their shades of green beauty, the rugged paths along the ridges lines by boulders are seldom trodden by human foot, and the sands are a desert waste on which, for days together, no footprint appears save that left by some passing sea-bird. A walk of 10 minutes from my cottage brought one to the  boulders from where the undulations of the shore started.

I was assured by my boss, the Director of the hospital that it was almost a two year paid holiday for me as the diseases were commonplace and most of the patients required hardly any prolonged hospitalisation. There was only one cardiac case in the last six months of my stay. Since I was rather dull for want of work I got busy in doing my studies for appearing for my Doctoral programme. My aunt, Dr. Rama Banerjee, came to stay with me around this time for a couple of weeks. My aunt had recently retired from SSKM Hospital and a renowned forensic pathologist, who had helped West Bengal Police to solve many a crime during her tenure and had functioned as a medico-legal expert in behalf of the public prosecutor. She now delivers guest lectures at some medical colleges in the country and abroad and is a guide to students who want to specialise in her domain. Never married she remained a stout, no-nuisance lady in her small bespectacled frame. I was overjoyed to welcome her and went to Digha station in the only car of the hospital to bring her to my cottage. She had brought along a charming young lady, Swastika Guin, as her assistant. Together with the two small suitcases and a couple of handbags there was also a large dilapidated steel trunk. A steel trunk used to be in vogue at least two decades back before moulded luggage made their way into the market and made me curious regarding its contents. The trunk was heavy and did not fit into the truck of the Ambassador, whereupon the driver with some ingenuity tied it on the roof, binding it with the car  with some strong coconut ropes bought from a nearby shop.

My cottage was suddenly smelling of fresh cooking as Swastika turned out to be an amazing chef and we had no dearth of fresh fish and vegetables at Tajpur.

“You certainly don’t seem to be overworked, Avik,” my aunt remarked, as we turned out of the gate after tea, on the next day of her arrival, for a stroll on the shore. “Is this a new hospital, or an old one in a state of senile decay?”

“Why, the fact is the hospital is hardly a decade old,” I answered, “there is virtually not much disease. All the ailments of modern lives can be found only in cities. People are simple here, they work in fields, on the sea and in some shops. The stressful life has not touched them. There are some resorts and that causes some stupid cases like overdoes of alcohol and once there was a case of drowning. Of late some Kolkata people have made some cottages and come during vacations. A handful of them do stay permanently and go to Kolkata when the need arises. The Director, Dr. Bhattacharya is from Medinipur town and has a roaring practise during weekends, which forces him to go to his home-town on every Friday to return on Monday morning. Quite a nice guy and he is pretty satisfied about how this hospital is running. ”

“Well, if he is satisfied, I suppose you are,” said my aunt with a smile. “You are getting a seaside holiday, and being paid for it. But I didn’t know you were as near to the sea as this.”

We were entering, as we spoke, a gap through the low boulders, forming a steep track down to the shore. Fishermen use their hand-carts to slide through this gap to gather sea-weed and small crabs after a shower and storm, which are quite frequent in this part during the monsoons. The gap, popularly known as ‘ Ghorar Lej’ due to its shape, is one of the entry point to the sweeping shore from the elevated land.

“What a magnificent stretch of sand!” continued aunt, as we reached the bottom, and stood looking out seaward across the deserted beach. “There is something very majestic and solemn in a great expanse of sandy shore when the tide is out, and I know of nothing which is capable of conveying the impression of solitude so completely. The smooth, unbroken surface not only displays itself uninhabited for the moment, but it offers convincing testimony that it has been undisturbed through a considerable lapse of time. Here, for instance, we have clear evidence that for several days only two pairs of feet besides our own have trodden this gap.”

“How do you arrive at the ‘several days’? It is true that after monsoons people hardly come through this gap.” I asked.

“In the simplest manner possible,” he replied. “The moon is now in the third quarter, and the tides are consequently neap-tides. You can see quite plainly the two lines of seaweed and debris which indicate the high-water marks of the tides. These areas will have two high tides during twenty four hours , the one at night higher than the other. The strip of comparatively dry sand over them, over which the water has not risen for several days, is, as you see, marked by only two sets of footprints, and those footprints will not be completely obliterated by the sea until the next spring-tide—which will happen on a full moon day, nearly a week from to-day. If you observe closely there is a thin dry mark just two feet away from where we are standing. ”

“Yes, I see now, and the thing appears obvious enough when one has heard the explanation. But it is really rather odd that no one should have passed through this gap for days, and then that four persons should have come here within quite a short interval of one another.”

“What makes you think they have done so?” my aunt asked.

“Well,” I replied, “both of these sets of footprints appear to be quite fresh, and to have been made about the same time.”

“Not at the same time, Avik,” cautioned my aunt. “There is certainly an interval of several hours between them, though precisely how many hours we cannot judge, since there has been so little wind lately to disturb them; but the fisherman unquestionably passed here not more than three hours ago, and I should say probably within an hour; whereas the other man—who seems to have come up from a boat to fetch something of considerable weight—returned through the gap certainly not less, and probably more, than four hours ago.”

I gazed at my aunt in blank astonishment. We always knew her  special knowledge and powers of inference.

“It is clear, aunt,” I said, “that footprints have a very different meaning to you from what they have for me. I don’t see in the least how you have reached any of these conclusions.”

“I suppose not,” was the reply; “but, you see, special knowledge of this kind is the stock-in-trade of the forensic specialist, and has to be acquired by special study, though the present example is one of the greatest simplicity. But let us consider it point by point; and first we will take this set of footprints which I have inferred to be a fisherman’s. Note their enormous size. They should be the footprints of a giant. But the length of the stride shows that they were made by a rather short man. Then observe the massiveness of the soles, and the fact that they are flat. Note also the peculiar clumsy tread—the deep toe and heel marks, as if the walker had wooden legs, or fixed ankles and knees. From that character we can safely infer high boots of thick, rigid leather, so that we can diagnose high boots, massive and stiff, with flat soles, and many sizes too large for the wearer. But the only boot that answers this description is the fisherman’s gum-boot—made of enormous size to enable him to wade through the water , in particular during the cold weather. I doubt whether the local fishermen can afford them. Now look at the other footprints; there is a double track, you see, one set coming from the sea and one going towards it. As the man (who was bow-legged and turned his toes in) has trodden in his own footprints, it is obvious that he came from the sea, and returned to it. But observe the difference in the two sets of prints; the returning ones are much deeper than the others, and the stride much shorter. Evidently he was carrying something when he returned, and that something was very heavy. Moreover, we can see, by the greater depth of the toe impressions, that he was stooping forward as he walked, and so probably carried the weight on his back. Is that quite clear?”

“Perfectly,” I replied. “But how do you arrive at the interval of time between the visits of the two men?”

“That also is quite simple. The tide is now about halfway out; it is thus about three hours since high water. Now, the fisherman walked just about the neap-tide, high-water mark, sometimes above it and sometimes below. But none of his footprints have been obliterated; therefore he passed after high water—that is, less than three hours ago; and since his footprints are all equally distinct, he could not have passed when the sand was very wet. Therefore he probably passed less than an hour ago. The other man’s footprints, on the other hand, reach only to the neap-tide, high-water mark, where they end abruptly. The sea has washed over the remainder of the tracks and obliterated them. Therefore he passed not less than three hours and not more than four days ago—probably within twenty-four hours.”

As my aunt concluded her demonstration the sound of voices were heard from above, mingled with the tramping of feet, and immediately afterwards a group of men appeared at the head of the gap descending towards the shore. First came a short burly fisherman glad in a red sleeveless tee and a lungi, then the local police-officer in company with my Principal Dr. Bhattacharya, while the rear of the procession was brought up by two constables carrying a stretcher. As he reached the bottom of the gap, the fisherman, who was evidently acting as guide, turned along the shore, retracing his own tracks, and the procession followed in his wake.

“A Doctor, a stretcher, two constables, and a police,” observed my aunt. “What’s happening, Avik ? ”

“A fall from the cliff. There are some cliffs on the right side of the shore and beyond that are the fish bheris,” I replied, “or a body washed up on the shore.”

“Probably,” she said; “but we may as well walk in that direction.”

We turned to follow the retreating procession, and as we strode along the smooth surface left by the retiring tide my aunt resumed:

“The subject of footprints has always interested me deeply for two reasons. First, the evidence furnished by footprints is constantly being brought forward, and is often of cardinal importance; and, secondly, the whole subject is capable of really systematic and scientific treatment. In the main the data are anatomical, but age, sex, occupation, health, and disease all give their various indications. Clearly, for instance, the footprints of an old man will differ from those of a young man of the same height, and I need not point out to you that those of a person suffering from locomotor ataxia or Parkinson’s disease would be quite unmistakable.”

“Yes, I see that plainly enough,” I said.

“Here, now,” she continued, “is a case in point.” She halted to point at a row of footprints that appeared suddenly above high-water mark, and having proceeded a short distance, crossed the line again, and vanished where the waves had washed over them. They were easily distinguished from any of the others by the clear impressions of circular rubber heels.

“Do you see anything remarkable about them?” she asked.

“I notice that they are considerably deeper than our own,” I answered.

“Yes, and the boots are about the same size as ours, whereas the stride is considerably shorter—quite a short stride, in fact. Now there is a pretty constant ratio between the length of the foot and the length of the leg, between the length of leg and the height of the person, and between the stature and the length of stride. A long foot means a long leg, a tall man, and a long stride. But here we have a long foot and a short stride. What do you make of that?”

“The depth of the footprints shows that he was much heavier than either of us,” I suggested; “perhaps fat.”

“Yes,” said my aunt, “that seems to be the explanation. The conclusion is that he was about five feet seven inches high, and excessively fat.” She resumed our walk, keeping an eye on the procession ahead until it had disappeared round a curve in the coast-line. Presently we reached a small projection of the cliff, and, turning right, came  upon the party which had preceded us. The men had halted in a narrow ledge, and now stood looking down at a prostrate figure beside which my Director was kneeling.

“We were wrong, you see,” observed aunt. “He has not fallen over the cliff, nor has he been washed up by the sea. He is lying above high-water mark, and those footprints that we have been examining appear to be his.”

As we approached, my Director turned, smiled and held up his hand.

“ Nasty affair, Avik. Never happened in my tenure,” Dr. Bhattacharya said, “There seems to have been foul play here, and I want to be clear about the tracks before anyone crosses them.”

Acknowledging this caution, we advanced to where the constables were standing, and looked down with some curiosity at the dead man. He was a tall, frail-looking man, thin to the point of emaciation, and appeared to be about thirty-five years of age. He lay in an easy posture, with half-closed eyes and a tranquil expression that contrasted strangely enough with the tragic circumstances of his death. What caught my eye was an outlined triangle, rather less than an inch along each side marked on his forehead. The marking was done in Red in a greasy, sticky sort of ink or colour.

“It is a clear case of murder,” said Dr. Bhattacharya, dusting the sand from his knees as he stood up. “There is a deep knife-wound above the heart, which must have caused death almost instantaneously.”

“How long should you say he has been dead, Doctor?” asked the police officer.

“Twelve hours at least,” was the reply. “He is quite cold and stiff.”

 

 

“Twelve hours, eh?” repeated the officer. “That would bring it to about six o’clock this morning.”

“I won’t commit myself to a definite time,” said Dr Bhattacharya hastily. “I only say not less than twelve hours. It might have been considerably more.”

“Ah!” said the cop. “Well, he made a pretty good fight for his life, to all appearances.” He nodded at the sand, which for some feet around the body bore the deeply indented marks of feet, as though a furious struggle had taken place. “It’s a suspicious affair,” pursued the police officer, addressing Dr. Bhattacharya. “There seems to have been only one man in it—there is only one set of footprints besides those of the deceased—and we’ve got to find out who he is; and I reckon there won’t be much trouble about that, seeing the kind of trade-marks he has left behind him.”

“No,” agreed the Doctor; “there ought not to be much trouble in identifying those boots. He would seem to be a daily wager, judging by the nail marks. Wearing a torn shoe fixed by the nails driven by a roadside cobbler. Who uses nails in the soles of shoe nowadays ? ”

“No, sir; not a labourer,” dissented the police officer. “The foot is too small, for one thing; and then the nails are not regular cobbler-nails. Now these have got no tips, and the nails are arranged in a pattern on the soles and heels. They are probably hiking-boots or sporting shoes of some kind. Looks to be spikes to me. Plus that red mark on forehead is suspicious.” He strode to and fro with his notebook in his hand, writing down hasty notes, snapping away from his mobile and stooping to scrutinize the impressions in the sand. The Doctor also busied himself in noting down the facts concerning which he would have to give evidence, while my aunt regarded in silence and with an air of intense preoccupation the footprints around the body and the red mark which remained to testify to the circumstances of the crime.

“It is pretty clear, up to a certain point,” the officer observed, as he concluded his investigations, “how the affair happened, and it is pretty clear, too, that the murder was premeditated. You see, Doctor, the deceased gentleman, Biswarup, was apparently walking home from Khjura Bheri; we saw his footprints along the shore—those rubber heels make them easy to identify—and he didn’t go down Ghorar Lej, the other exit of the beach. He probably meant to climb up the cliff by that little track that you see there, which the people here call  ‘Hangorer Path’, the other exit from the beach. Now the murderer must have known that he was coming, and waited upon the cliff, partly hidden behind those large boulders, to keep a lookout. When he saw Biswarup enter the bay, he came down the path and attacked him, and, after a tough struggle, succeeded in stabbing him. Probably he put the mark on the forehead after stabbing like an insignia. Then he turned and went back up the path. You can see the double track between the path and the place where the struggle took place, and the footprints going to the path are on top of those coming from it.”

“If you follow the tracks,” said Dr. Bhattacharya, “you ought to be able to see where the murderer went to.”

“I’m afraid not,” replied the sergeant. “There are no marks on the path itself—the soil is too hard here and mixed with pebbles, and so is the ground above. But I’ll go over it carefully all the same.”

The investigations being so far concluded, the body was lifted on to the stretcher, and the small procession, consisting of the bearers, the Doctor, and the fisherman, moved off towards  Hangorer Path.

“A very smart police officer that,” said my aunt. “I should like to know what he wrote in his notebook.”

“His account of the circumstances of the murder seemed a very reasonable one,” I said.

“Very. He noted the plain and essential facts, and drew the natural conclusions from them. But there are some very peculiar features in this case; so unique that I am disposed to make a few notes for my own information.”

She stooped over the place where the body had lain, and having narrowly examined the sand there and in the place where the dead man’s feet had rested, drew out a small notebook from her bag and made a memorandum. She next made a rapid sketch-plan of the beach, marking the position of the body and the various impressions in the sand, and then, following the double track leading from and to  Hangorer Path, scrutinized the footprints with the deepest attention, making copious notes and sketches in her book.

“We may as well go up by Hangorer Path,” said my aunt. ” It’s a short climb, and there may be visible traces of the murderer after all. The rock is only a sandstone, and not a very hard one either.”

We approached the foot of the little rugged track which zigzagged up the face of the cliff, and, stooping down among the stiff, dry herbage, examined the surface. Here, at the bottom of the path, where the rock was softened by the weather, there were several distinct impressions on the crumbling surface of the murderer’s nailed boots, though they were somewhat confused by the tracks of the police officer. But as we ascended the marks became rather less distinct, and at quite a short distance from the foot of the cliff we lost them altogether, though we had no difficulty in following the more recent traces of the police officer’s passage up the path.

When we reached the top of the cliff we paused to scan the path that ran along its edge, but here, too, although the police officer’s heavy boots had left quite visible impressions on the ground, there were no signs of any other feet. At a little distance the sagacious officer himself was pursuing his investigations, walking backwards and forwards with his body bent double, and his eyes fixed on the ground. The path meandered into the thick tamarisk trees. I just had the fleeting thought of bringing Swastika to soak in this reddish-brown foliage and give her a feast for her eyes. But then I had no idea of how to do this venture avoiding the stern glance of Dr. Rama Banerjee.

“Not a trace of him anywhere,” said he, straightening himself up as we approached. “I was afraid there wouldn’t be after all this dry weather. I shall have to try a different tack. This is a small place, and if those spiked shoes belong to anyone living here they’ll be sure to be known.”

“The deceased gentleman—Mr. Biswarup, I think you called him,” said my aunt as we turned towards the village—”is he a native of the locality?”

“Oh no, Ma’am,” replied the officer. “He is almost a stranger. He has only been here about three weeks; but, you know, in a little place like this a man soon gets to be known—and his business, too, for that matter,” he added, with a smile.

“What was his business, then?” asked Rama Banerjee.

“Pleasure, I believe. He was down here for a holiday, though it’s a good way past the season; but, then, he had a friend living here, and that makes a difference. Mr. Amit Sarkar up at the Blue Lagoon was an old friend of his, I understand. I am going to call on him now. Mr Sarkar runs a small resort at the Lagoon and Mr. Biswarup was staying there only. ”

We walked on along the footpath that led towards the village, but had only proceeded two or three hundred metres when a loud hail drew our attention to a man running across a field towards us from the direction of the cliff.

“Why, here is Mr. Sarkar himself,” exclaimed the police officer, stopping short and waving his hand. “I expect he has heard the news already.”

We also halted, and with some curiosity watched the approach of this new party to the tragedy. As the stranger drew near we saw that he was a tall, athletic-looking man of about forty, dressed in a track suit, and having the appearance of an sophisticated urbanite trying to be at home in this surrounding.

“Is it true, Officer ?” he exclaimed as he came up to us, panting from his exertions. “About Biswarup, I mean. There is a rumour that he has been found dead on the beach.”

“It’s quite true, sir, I am sorry to say; and, what is worse, he has been murdered.”

“My God! you don’t say so!”

He turned towards us a face that must ordinarily have been jovial enough, but was now pale and scared and, after a brief pause, he exclaimed:

“Murdered! Good God! Poor Biswarup! How did it happen, Officer? and when? and is there any clue to the murderer?”

“We can’t say for certain when it happened,” replied the sergeant, “and as to the question of clues, I was just coming up to call on you.”

“On me!” exclaimed Sarkar, with a startled glance at the officer. “What for?”

“Well, we should like to know something about Mr. Biswarup—who he was, and whether he had any enemies, and so forth; anything, in fact, that would give as a hint where to look for the murderer. And you are the only person in the place who knew him at all intimately.”

Mr Sarkar’s pallid face turned a shade paler, and he glanced about him with an obviously embarrassed air.

“I’m afraid,” he began in a hesitating manner, “I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help you much. I didn’t know much about his affairs. You see he was—well—only a casual acquaintance—”

“Well,” interrupted the cop, “you can tell us who and what he was, and where he lived, and so forth. We’ll find out the rest if you give us the start.”

“I see,” said Sarkar. “Yes, I expect you will.” His eyes glanced restlessly to and fro, and he added presently: “You must come up to-morrow, and have a talk with me about him, and I’ll see what I can remember.”

“I’d rather come this evening,” said the officer firmly.

“Not this evening,” pleaded Sarkar. “I’m feeling rather—this affair, you know, has upset me. On top there are some guests at the resort and they are leaving tomorrow morning. I couldn’t give proper attention—”

His sentence petered out into a hesitating mumble, and the officer looked at him in evident surprise at his nervous, embarrassed manner. His own attitude, however, was perfectly firm, though polite.

“I don’t like pressing you, Mr. Sarkar,” said he, “but time is precious—we’ll have to go single file here; this pond is a public nuisance. They ought to bank it up at this end. I will again complain to the municipality. After you.”

The pond to which the police officer alluded had evidently extended at one time right across the path, but now, thanks to the dry weather, a narrow strait of half-dried mud kissed the morass, and along this Mr. Amit Sarkar proceeded to pick his way. The police officer was about to follow, when suddenly he stopped short with his eyes riveted upon the muddy track. A single glance showed me the cause of his surprise, for on the stiff, putty-like surface, standing out with the sharp distinctness of a wax mould, were the fresh footprints of the man who had just passed, each footprint displaying on its sole the impression of spikes arranged in a pyramid pattern, and on its heel a group of similar spikes arranged like a triangle.

The police officer hesitated for only a moment, in which he turned a quick startled glance upon us; then he followed, walking gingerly along the edge of the path as if to avoid treading in his predecessor’s footprints. Instinctively we did the same, following closely, and anxiously awaiting the next development of the tragedy. For a minute or two we all proceeded in silence, the officer being evidently at a loss how to act, and Mr. Sarkar busy with his own thoughts. At length the former spoke.

“You think, Mr. Sarkar, you would prefer me to look in on you tomorrow about this affair?”

“Much rather, if you wouldn’t mind,” was the eager reply.

“Then, in that case,” said the Police Officer, looking at his watch, “as I’ve got a good deal to see to this evening, I’ll leave you here, and make my way to the Thana.”

With a farewell flourish of his hand he climbed over a stile of bricks that led to a narrow bamboo bridge over a fish pond to take a short cut to the main road.

The departure of the police-officer was apparently a great relief to Mr. Sarkar, who at once fell back and began to talk with us.

“You are Dr. Avik, I think,” said he. “I saw you coming out of the hospital yesterday. I went to buy some medicines from the pharmacy. We know everything that is happening in this small place, you see.” He laughed nervously, and indicating my aunt, added : “But I don’t know her.”

I introduced my aunt, at the mention of whose name our new acquaintance knitted his brows, and glanced inquisitively at her.

“Dr. Rama Banerjee,” he repeated; “the name seems familiar to me. I have probably read about you in the newspaper. Or am I mistaken, Madam ?”

My aunt told him about her work and how she was associated with Police for forensics for a very long period of time.  Mr. Sarkar, having again bestowed on us a look full of curiosity, continued: “This horrible affair will interest you, no doubt, from a professional point of view. You were present when my poor friend’s body was found, I think?”

“No,” replied aunt; “we came up afterwards, when they were removing it.”

Our companion then proceeded to question us about the murder, but received from aunt only the most general and ambiguous replies. Nor was there time to go into the matter at length, for the narrow path  presently emerged on to the road.

“I will invite you Madam and Dr Avik for a dinner at my resort as soon as the time turns for the better,” he humbly said before turning towards the lagoon. We pursued our way towards my cottage.

“The cop is off to get a warrant, I suppose,” I observed while we were inching close. I was feeling quite hungry and hoped that Swastika has managed to cook up a sumptuous breakfast which will bring to my mind some poetic adjectives to flatter her. Obviously out of my aunt’s earshot.

“Yes; and mighty anxious lest his man should be off before he can execute it. But he is fishing in deeper waters than he thinks, Avik. This is a very singular and complicated case; one of the strangest, in fact, that I have ever met. I shall follow its development with deep interest.”

“The police officer seems pretty cocksure, all the same,” I said.

“He is not to blame for that,” replied aunt. “He is acting on the obvious appearances, which is the proper thing to do in the first place. Perhaps his notebook contains more than I think it does. But we shall see.”

We had a breakfast of luchi and aloo chechki. I got a chance of complimenting Swastika and did not waste the opportunity to comment, “ It takes immense love to slice the potato so thin” causing the first shade of blush to shadow her face.

“I have plenty to occupy me while you are away. Unless I am wider of the mark than usual, the insignia on the forehead was made by a red Chinese seal. The red Chinese seals are typically made of stone, sometimes of metals or ivory, and are typically used with red ink or cinnabar paste. Have seen them used for calligraphy also. A Chinaman’s seal also acts for his signature on all sorts of documents; it is impressed or printed by hand pressure from a little engraved stone die, precisely as this triangle seems to have been, and the ink or colour is almost always red, compounded of vermilion, wax, and oil of sesamum.” my aunt said cheerfully while I was pulling up my socks to get ready for my duty at the hospital.

I sat up with a whistle. “Phew! Then it may have been done by a Chinese guy!”

Dr Rama Banerjee shrugged her shoulders. “It’s possible,” she said; “of course, though, the sign, the triangle, is not a Chinese character. As a character, of course it is the Greek Delta. But it may be no character at all. In the signs of the ancient Kabbalah, the triangle, apex upward as it was in this case, was the symbol of fire; apex downward, it signified water.

“ My God !” I said, “don’t tell me the police has to search all China and Greece, and—wherever the Kabbalistic pundits come from!”

” Kabbalah, it’s Judaism,” she answered with a smile. ” If am not mistaken there is a Chinese connection. But let me first concentrate on the footprints.”

My visit to the hospital occupied in all a clear four hours, and when I reached home I found one of the smaller spare bed rooms have been converted into a mini- laboratory with aunt and Swastika quite busy in setting it up. The cottage was quite large, a duplex with four bedrooms. They have managed to put in some tables and chairs, set-up  test tubes, gas stove and burners. I could now figure the mystery of the heavy trunk.

A knock on the door and suddenly  I found the police officer standing.

“ Well, Doctor Avik. I’ve arrested Amit Sarkar and I ‘ve got him in judicial custody. But I wish it had been someone else.”

“So does he, I expect,” I remarked.

“You see, Doctor,” continued the cop, “we all like Mr. Amit Sarkar. He’s been among us a matter of three years, and he’s like one of ourselves. However, what I’ve come about is this; it seems the elderly lady who was with you this morning is Dr. Rama Banerjee, the great forensic pathologist. Now Mr. Sarkar seems to have heard about her, as most of us have, and he is very anxious for her to take up the defence. Do you think she would consent?”

“I expect so,” I answered, remembering my aunt’s keen interest in the case; “but I will ask her .”

“Thank you, sir,” said the sergeant. “And perhaps you wouldn’t mind stepping to the Court House at 10 am day after tomorrow. It is near Digha and will take you an hour of driving. I can send a police jeep to pick up both of you at 9 am. Though a conviction would mean a step up the ladder for me, I’d be glad enough to find that I’d made a mistake. In my last ten years of service in these areas, this is the first time when a mysterious murder happened. ”

By the time I finished with the police officer, the bicycle of our maid swept through the open gate of our compound with my aunt pedalling in full fury and Swastika perched on the carrier. They went off in a hurry.

I was quite relieved to find my lunch ready on the table with freshly cooked dal, rice, aloo posto and egg curry. The maid told me that aunt had taken a large kitchen bowl and spoons while cycling off. The duo came back in a couple of hours and unloaded quite a heavy hamper which Swastika was carrying on her lap. I dutifully conveyed the Police Officer’s request to my aunt.

“ Am sure Mr. Sarkar will have his own lawyer. But anyway we will be present in the court,” said my aunt while helping Swastika to hold the hamper with as much case as if it contained a collection of priceless porcelain, carried it tenderly to the makeshift laboratory; from where they reappeared after a considerable interval, smilingly apologetic for the delay.

While we were having our afternoon tea, my aunt said, “I have been considering this murder. Really it is a most singular case, and promises to be uncommonly complicated, too.”

“Then I assume that you will protect Mr. Sarkar ?”

“I shall if Sarkar gives a reasonably straightforward account of himself.”

It appeared that this condition was likely to be fulfilled, for when we arrived at the police chowki that evening, we found Mr. Sakar kept in a small closed room, flanked by two police constables at the door, in an eminently communicative frame of mind.

“I want you, Dr. Rama Banerjee, to help my lawyer in this terrible affair, because I feel confident that you will be able to clear me. And I promise you that there shall be no reservation or concealment on my part of anything that you ought to know.”

“Very well,” said my aunt. “By the way, I see you have changed your shoes.”

“Yes, the sergeant took possession of those I was wearing. He said something about comparing them with some footprints, but there can’t be any footprints like those shoes here in Tajpur.  These are studded boots which I wear. An old habit from the time I used to throw javelin. The spikes are fixed in the soles in quite a peculiar pattern. I had them made at Bentick Street in Kolkata. The spikes are of Titanium Alloy of a 13mm size. Got them made almost a decade back and quite comfortable in this terrain.”

“Have you more than one pair?”

“No. I have no other spiked boots.”

“That is important,” said my aunt. “And now I judge that you have something to tell us that bears on this crime. Am I right?”

“Yes. There is something that I am afraid it is necessary for you to know, although it is very painful to me to revive memories of my past that I had hoped were buried for ever. But perhaps, after all, it may not be necessary for these confidences to be revealed to anyone but yourself.”

“I hope not,” said aunt; “and if it is not necessary you may rely upon me not to allow any of your secrets to leak out. But you are wise to tell me everything that may in any way bear upon the case.”

At this juncture, seeing that confidential matters were about to be discussed, I rose and prepared to withdraw; but Sarkar waved me back into my chair.

“You need not go away, Dr. Avik,” he said. “It is through you that I have the benefit of Dr. Banerjee’s help, and I know that you doctors can be trusted to keep your own counsel and your clients’ secrets. And now for some confessions of mine. In the first place, it is my painful duty to tell you that I am a discharged convict. I was caught in a scam where I was the scapegoat and everyone else made money on my behest. I had served three years in a sentence and had come out five years back. Then I fled Kolkata and bought this resort and helped myself to a decent living.”

He glanced furtively at my aunt to observe its effect. But he might as well have looked at a wooden figure-head or a stone mask as at my aunt’s immovable visage; and when his communication had been acknowledged by a slight nod, he proceeded:

“The history of my wrong-doing is the history of hundreds of others. I was a clerk in a chit fund in Kolkata at the infamous, Rose Valley, and was getting on as well. I used to mobilise deposits from investors and had the misfortune to make three very undesirable acquaintances. They were all young men, though rather older than myself, and were close friends, forming a sort of little community or club. They were quite sober and decently-behaved young follows, but they were very decidedly addicted to gambling in a small way, and they soon infected me. Before long I was the keenest gambler of them all. Cards and various forms of betting began to be the chief pleasures of my life, and not only was the bulk of my scanty salary often consumed in the inevitable losses, but presently I found myself considerably in debt, without any visible means of discharging my liabilities. It is true that my four friends were my chief—in fact, almost my only—creditors, but still, the debts existed, and had to be paid.

“Now these three friends of mine—named respectively Arpan, Bisworup and Jimmy —were uncommonly clever men, though the full extent of their cleverness was not appreciated by me until too late. And I, too, was clever in my way, and a most undesirable way it was, for I possessed the fatal gift of imitating handwriting and signatures with the most remarkable accuracy. So perfect were my copies that the writers themselves were frequently unable to distinguish their own signatures from my imitations, and many a time was my skill invoked by some of my companions to play off practical jokes upon the others. In time, my superiors also used my skill to amuse themselves and word went up to our Director also.

“And now follows the consequence which you have no doubt foreseen. My debts, though small, were accumulating, and I saw no prospect of being able to pay them. Then, one night, Jimmy made a proposition. We had been playing bridge at his rooms, and once more my ill luck had caused me to increase my debt.

“‘Look here, Amit,’ he said presently, ‘this is all very well, but, you know, I can’t pay my debts with your empty promises. My creditors demand hard cash.’

“‘I’m very sorry,’ I replied, ‘but I can’t help it.’

“‘Yes, you can,’ said he, ‘and I’ll tell you how.’ He then propounded a scheme which I at first rejected with indignation, but which, when the others backed him up, I at last allowed myself to be talked into, and actually put into execution. I contrived, by taking advantage of the carelessness of some of my superiors at Rose Valley, to get possession of some blank cash deposit forms, which I filled up with small amounts from several registered investors—and signed with careful imitations of the signatures of some of our clients. This money was never deposited into the bank.  Jimmy got some stamps of the Bank made for stamping on the deposit slips and when this had been done I handed over to him the whole collection of cash in settlement of my debts to all of my three companions.

” Unfortunately the promoters of the company were fraud and I was soon caught in a separate case of embezzlement where I had copied the signature of one director to encash a large cheque on behest of another director. In-fighting started and soon the case was investigated by CBI. The Director under whom I was working was sent to jail and I was arrested after the forgery came to light. In such cases lot of people sing and some insiders turned approvers of CBI. The case was political and lot of politicians were involved. I was promised to be handsomely paid off if I plead guilty. I did so and after the term got money through one of the political leaders to buy and run this property with little chance of my identity being discovered in such a remote place. I started a new life.”

“All this time I had neither seen nor heard anything of my three agents, and I hoped and believed that they had passed completely out of my life. But they had not. Only a month ago I met them once more, to my sorrow, and from the day of that meeting all the peace and security of my quiet existence at Tajpur have vanished. Like evil spirits they have stolen into my life, changing my happiness into bitter misery, filling my days with dark forebodings and my nights with terror.”

Here Mr. Sarkar paused, and seemed to sink into a gloomy reverie.

“Under what circumstances did you meet these men?” my aunt asked.

“Ah!” exclaimed Sarkar, arousing with sudden excitement, “the circumstances were very singular and suspicious. I had gone over to Kolaghat for the day to do some shopping. About eleven o’clock in the forenoon I was making some purchases in a shop when I noticed two smartly dressed men looking in the window, or rather pretending to do so, whilst they conversed earnestly. It seemed to me that their faces were familiar to me. I looked at them more attentively, and then it suddenly dawned upon me, most unpleasantly, that they resembled Arpan and Jimmy. And yet they were not quite like. The resemblance was there, but the differences were greater than the lapse of time would account for. Moreover, the man who resembled Jimmy had a rather large mole on the left cheek just under the eye, while the other man  wore a moustache, whereas Arpant had always been clean-shaven.

“As I was speculating upon the resemblance they looked up, and caught my intent and inquisitive eye, whereupon they moved away from the window; and when, having completed my purchases, I came out into the street, they were nowhere to be seen.

“That evening, as I was walking by the Ganga before returning to Tajpur, I overtook a launch which was being towed down-stream. Three men were walking ahead on the bank with a long tow-line, and one man stood in the cockpit steering. As I approached, and was reading the name Sonar Bangla on the stern, the man at the helm looked round, and with a start of surprise I recognized my old acquaintance Biswarup. The recognition, however, was not mutual, for I had grown a beard in the interval, and I passed on without appearing to notice him; but when I overtook the other two men, and recognized, as I had feared, the other members of the gang, I must have looked rather hard at Jimmy, for he suddenly halted, and exclaimed: ‘Why, it’s our old friend Amit ! Our long-lost brother!’ He held out his hand with effusive cordiality, and began to make inquiries as to my welfare; but I cut him short with the remark that I was not proposing to renew the acquaintance, and, turning off on to a gangway  that led away from the river, strode off without looking back.

“Naturally this meeting exercised my mind a good deal, and when I thought of the two men whom I had seen in the town, I could hardly believe that their likeness to this gang was a mere coincidence. And yet when I had met Arpan and Jimmy by the river, I had found them little altered, and had particularly noticed that Jimmy had no mole on his face, and that Arpan was clean-shaven as of old.

“But a day or two later all my doubts were resolved by a paragraph in the local paper. It appeared that on the day of my visit to Kolaghat a number of cloned ATM cards have been used to withdraw cash. The CCTV footage showed three men in  jeans and tees had been the perpetrators.  One of them had a mole on the left cheek, another was distinguished by a moustache, while the description of the third I did not recognize. None of the withdrawals had been for large amounts, though the total sum obtained by the forgers was nearly forty thousands; but the most interesting point was that the ATM cards were cloned skilfully from unsuspecting people in Kolkata and they were used only in Kolaghat. By the time the customers complained to the police after getting messages on their mobiles, enough time had waded. Evidently the swindlers were clever and careful men, and willing to take a good deal of trouble for the sake of security, and the result of their precautions was that the police could make no guess as to their identity.”

“The very next day, happening to walk over to one of the bheris at Tajpur Lagoon, I came upon the three men. Jimmy greeted me with an air of surprise. ‘What! Still hanging about here, Amit?’ he exclaimed. ‘That is not discreet of you. You should leave this area as soon as possible.”

“‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

“‘Tut, tut!’ said he. ‘We read the papers like other people, and we know now what business took you to Kolaghat. But it’s foolish of you to hang about the neighbourhood where you might be spotted at any moment.’”

“The implied accusation took me aback so completely that I stood staring at him in speechless astonishment, and at that unlucky moment a known fisherman, from who is a regular supplier to my resort, passed along the quay. Seeing me, he stopped and said ‘ Salam Sarkar Sahab’.

As the man turned away, Jimmy’s face broke out into a cunning smile.

“So you are Mr. Amit Sarkar, of Tajpur, now, are you?’ said he. ‘Well, I hope you won’t be too proud to come and look in on your old friends. We shall be staying here for some time.’

“That same night Bisworup made his appearance at my house. He had come as an emissary from the gang, to ask me to do some work for them—to execute some forgeries on some land deeds, in fact. The jailed Rose Valley Director had been released on bail and have taken their services to amass a large track of land of some deceased farmers near Durgapur. The concocted story fed to me was an airport would be coming up nearby and an acre of land will also be transferred to me. The municipality under whose aegis this land falls, is well managed. Of course I refused, and pretty bluntly, too, whereupon Bisworup began to throw out vague hints as to what might happen if I made enemies of the gang, and to utter veiled, but quite intelligible, threats. You will say that I was an idiot not to send him packing, and threaten to hand over the whole gang to the police; but I was never a man of strong nerve, and I don’t mind admitting that I was mortally afraid of that cunning devil, Jimmy.”

“The next thing that happened was that Biswarup came and booked a room for a fortnight at my resort, and, in spite of my efforts to avoid him, he haunted me continually. One day I was foolish enough to allow myself to be lured on to their accommodation for a few drinks and a hearty meal. They had rented a steamer for a month and the next day we went for a sail. They made me change my Javelin shoes , into a pair of rubber-soled shoes (so that I should not make dents in the smooth deck with my studs), bore a hand at steering the steamer, and spent quite a pleasant day.

“From that time I found myself gradually drifting back into a state of intimacy with these agreeable scoundrels, and daily becoming more and more afraid of them. In a moment of imbecility I mentioned what I had seen from the shop-window at Kolaghat, and, though they passed the matter off with a joke, I could see that they were mightily disturbed by it. Their efforts to induce me to join them were redoubled, and Biswarup took to haunt me daily —usually with documents and signatures which he tried to persuade me to copy. On one instance it was to do with title transfer of a diamond they had purchased from Bahadur Shah Zafar’s grand-nephew in Myanmar.”

“A few evenings ago Biswarup made a new and startling proposition. We were walking in my garden, and he had been urging me once more to rejoin the gang—unsuccessfully, I need not say. Presently he sat down on a seat against a hedge at the bottom of the garden, and, after an interval of silence, said suddenly:

“‘Then you absolutely refuse to go in with us?’

“‘Of course I do,’ I replied. ‘Why should I mix myself up with a gang of crooks when I have ample means and a decent position?’

“‘Of course,’ he agreed, ‘you’d be a fool if you did. But, you see, you know all about this Kolaghat job, to say nothing of our other little exploits, and you gave us away once before. Consequently, you can take it from me that, now Jimmy has run you to earth, he won’t leave you in peace until you have given us some kind of a hold on you. You know too much, you see, and as long as you have a clean sheet you are a standing menace to us. That is the position. You know it, and Jimmy knows it, and he is a desperate man, and as cunning as the devil.’

“‘I know that,’ I said gloomily.

“‘Very well,’ continued Biswarup. ‘Now I’m going to make you an offer. The diamond whose provenance deed you did not copy is in my custody. I will sell that to you for a sum of Rs. 30 Lakhs. The market value is Rs. 1 crore or more. I had taken it for a valuation and since then it had remained with me. Promise me this —you can easily afford it—and I will set you free for ever from Jimmy and the others.’

“‘How will you do that?’ I asked.

“‘Very simply,’ he replied. ‘I am sick of them all, and sick of this risky, uncertain mode of life. Now I am ready to clean off my own slate and set you free at the same time; but I must have some means of livelihood in view.’

“‘You mean that you will turn in evidence?’ I asked.

“‘Yes, if you will pay me the thirty lakhs.”’

“I was so taken aback that for some time I made no reply, and as I sat considering this amazing proposition, the silence was suddenly broken by a suppressed sneeze from the other side of the hedge.

“Biswarup and I started to our feet. Immediately hurried footsteps were heard in the narrow lane outside the hedge. We raced up the garden to the gate and out through a side alley, but when we reached the lane there was not a soul in sight. We made a brief and fruitless search in the immediate neighbourhood, and then turned back to the house. Biswarup was deathly pale and very agitated, and I must confess that I was a good deal upset by the incident.

“‘ Who was eavesdropping ? This was awkward.,”’ said Bisworup.

“‘It is rather,’ I admitted; ‘but I expect it was only some inquisitive villager.’’’

“‘I don’t feel so sure of that,’ said he. ‘At any rate, we were stark lunatics to sit up against a hedge to talk secrets.’’’

“He paced the garden with me for some time in gloomy silence, and presently, after a brief request that I would think over his proposal, took himself off.

“I did not see him again until I met him last night at their place. Arpan called on me in the morning, and invited me to come and dine with them on their steamer. I at first declined, for I did not like to leave the resort at night. However, I agreed eventually, stipulating that I should be allowed to come home early, and I accordingly went. Bisworup and Arpan were waiting in the boat by the steps—for the launch had been moved out to a buoy—and we went on board and spent a very pleasant and lively evening. Arpan put me ashore at ten o’clock, and I walked straight home, and went to bed. Bisworup would have come with me, but the others insisted on his remaining, saying that they had some matters of business to discuss.”

“Which way did you walk home?” asked my aunt.

“I came through the town, and along the main road.”

“And that is all you know about this affair?”

“Absolutely all,” replied Sarkar. “I have now admitted you to secrets of my past life that I had hoped never to have to reveal to any human creature, and I still have some faint hope that it may not be necessary for you to divulge what I have told you. There are politicians involved and wouldn’t like the information to come out to the open. ”

“Your secrets shall not be revealed unless it is absolutely indispensable that they should be,” said aunt; “but you are placing your life in my hands, and you must leave me perfectly free to act as I think best. My take is you have not told me the complete story. But am certain that you did not murder Biswarup.”

With this she gathered her notes together, and we took our departure from the room.

“A very singular history, this, Avik,” she said, when, having wished the Police Officer “Good-night,” we stepped out on to the dark road. “What do you think of it?”

“I hardly know what to think,” I answered, “but, on the whole, it seems rather against Sarkar than otherwise. He admits that he is an old criminal, and it appears that he was being persecuted and blackmailed by Biswarup. It is true that he represents Jimmy as the ring leader in the persecution, but we have only his word for that. Biswarup was in his lodgings, and was undoubtedly taking the most active part in the business, and it is quite possible, and indeed probable, that Biswarup was the actual kingpin.”

My aunt nodded. “Yes,” she said, “that is certainly the line the prosecution will take if we allow the story to become known. Ha! what is this? We are going to have some rain.”

“Yes, and wind too. We are in for an September gale, I think.”

“And that,” said my aunt, “may turn out to be an important factor in our case.”

“How can the weather affect your case?” I asked in some surprise. But, as the rain suddenly descended in a pelting shower, we broke into a run, leaving my question unanswered.

On the following morning, which was fair and sunny after the stormy night, Dr. Bhattacharya called me to come prepared for the post-mortem and also invited my aunt. The reputation of my aunt seemed to have reached his ears.

After my aunt had given Swastika detailed instructions on how to conduct some experiments we left home. Dr. Bhattacharya greeted my aunt at the gate of the hospital and we put on the scrubs to get ready for the operation theatre. I had thought that Dr. Bhattacharya will excuse himself from the post-mortem but no such luck prevailed as he wanted to show off his knowledge to my aunt. As soon as the dissection started my aunt assumed a different personality. Much to the chagrin of Dr. Bhattacharya she insisted on weighing the body, and examining every organ—lungs, liver, stomach, and brain—yes, actually the brain!—as if there had been no clue whatever to the cause of death. And then, as a climax, she insisted on sending the contents of the stomach in a jar, sealed with the hospital seals together with a formal request through the hands of a trusted personal courier, to a Professor Sanyal at SSKM, for analysis and report. She would call and brief him in advance. Dr. Bhattacharya jokingly said, “ Madam, aren’t you going to demand an examination for the tubercle bacillus ? After all, the fellow may have died of bacterial infection.”

My aunt chuckled , and I murmured that the precautions appeared to have been somewhat excessive.

“Not at all,” was the smiling response. “You are losing sight of our function. We are the expert and impartial umpires, and it is our business to ascertain, with scientific accuracy, the cause of death. The prima facie appearances in this case suggest that the deceased was murdered by Sarkar, and that is the hypothesis advanced. But that is no concern of ours. It is not our function to confirm an hypothesis suggested by outside circumstances, but rather, on the contrary, to make certain that no other explanation is possible. And that is my invariable practice. No matter how glaringly obvious the appearances may be, I refuse to take anything for granted.”

Dr. Bhattacharya received this statement with a grunt of dissent.

Next day the proceedings of the court started. Swastika had managed to put two bulky folders in order for my aunt to refer to, if required. We were met at the court by Mr. Kalyan Haldar, the lawyer of Amit Sarkar.

The medical evidence was taken first. There was a lawyer appointed by the court, the public prosecutor, Mr. Lahiri who began the proceedings Dr. Bhattacharya, having been sworn, began, with sarcastic emphasis, to describe the condition of the lungs and liver, until he was interrupted by the judge.

“Is all this necessary?” the latter inquired. “I mean, is it material to the subject of the inquiry?”

“I should say not,” replied Dr. Bhattacharya “It appears to me to be quite irrelevant, but Dr. Rama Banerjee, who is watching the case for the defence, thought it necessary.”

“I think,” said the judge, “you had better give us only the facts that are material. The courts want you to tell it what you consider to have been the cause of death. We don’t want a lecture on pathology.”

“The cause of death,” said Dr. Bhattacharya, “was a penetrating wound of the chest, apparently inflicted with a large knife. The weapon entered between the second and third ribs on the left side close to the sternum or breast-bone. It wounded the left lung, and partially divided both the pulmonary artery and the aorta—the two principal arteries of the body.”

“Was this injury alone sufficient to cause death?” Mr. Lahiri, the public prosecutor, asked.

“Yes,” was the reply; “and death from injury to these great vessels would be practically instantaneous.”

“Could the injury have been self-inflicted?”

“So far as the position and nature of the wound are concerned,” replied the witness, “self-infliction would be quite possible. But since death would follow in a few seconds at the most, the weapon would be found either in the wound, or grasped in the hand, or, at least, quite close to the body. But in this case no weapon was found at all, and the wound must therefore certainly have been homicidal.”

“Did you see the body before it was moved?”

“Yes. It was lying on its back, with the arms extended and the legs nearly straight; and the sand in the neighbourhood of the body was trampled as if a furious struggle had taken place.”

“Did you notice anything remarkable about the footprints in the sand?”

“I did,” replied Dr. Bhattacharya. “They were the footprints of two persons only. One of these was evidently the deceased, whose footmarks could be easily identified by the circular rubber heels. The other footprints were those of a person—apparently a man—who wore shoes, or boots, the soles of which were studded with nails or spikes; and these spikes were arranged in a very peculiar and unusual manner, for those on the soles formed a pyramid shape, and those on the heel were set out in the form of a cross.”

“Have you ever seen shoes or boots with the nails or spikes arranged in this manner?”

“Yes. I have seen a pair of shoes which I am informed belong to the accused; the spikes in them are arranged as I have described.”

“Would you say that the footprints of which you have spoken were made by those shoes?”

“No; I could not say that. I can only say that, to the best of my belief, the pattern on the shoes is similar to that in the footprints.”

This was the sum of Dr. Bhattacharya’ s evidence, and to all of it my aunt listened with an immovable countenance, though with the closest attention. Equally attentive was the accused man, though not equally impassive; and so great was his agitation that presently one of the constables asked permission to get him a chair.

The next witness was Jimmy. He testified that he had viewed the body, and identified it as that of Biswarup Das; that he had been acquainted with deceased for some years, but knew practically nothing of his affairs. At the time of his death deceased was lodging in the resort.

On cross-questioning. Mr Haldar asked, “Why did he leave the lodgings that all of you rented  ? Was there any kind of disagreement!”

“Not in the least,” replied Jimmy. “He grew tired of the place, and came to live in a better place, which was Mr. Amit Sarkar’s resort. But we were the best of friends, and he stayed behind on most of the days with us. ”

“When did you see him last?”

“On the night before the body was found—that is, last Monday. He had been dining on the steamer we taken a short term lease of, and we put him ashore about midnight. He said as we were rowing him ashore that he intended to walk home along the sands as the tide was out. He went up the stone steps by the light-house, and turned at the top to wish us good-night. That was the last time I saw him alive.”

“Do you know anything of the relations between the accused and the deceased?” the lawyer asked.

“Very little,” replied Jimmy. “Mr. Sarkar was introduced to us by the deceased about a month ago. I believe they had been acquainted some years, and they appeared to be on excellent terms. There was no indication of any quarrel or disagreement between them.”

“What time did the accuse leave the steamer on the night of the murder?”

“About ten o’clock. He said that he wanted to get home early, as some of his staff at the resort were away and he had couple of guests.”

This was the whole of Jimmy’s evidence, and was confirmed by that of Arpan, the next witness. Then, when the fisherman had deposed to the discovery of the body, the police officer was called, and stepped forward, grasping a carpet-bag, and looking as uncomfortable as if he had been the accused instead of a witness. He described the circumstances under which he saw the body, giving the exact time and place with official precision.

“You have heard Dr. Bhattacharya’s description of the footprints?” Mr. Lahiri inquired.

“Yes. There were two sets. One set were evidently made by deceased. They showed that he entered Hangorer Path from the direction of the harbour. He had been walking along the shore just about high-water mark, sometimes above and sometimes below. Where he had walked below high-water mark the footprints had of course been washed away by the sea.”

“How far back did you trace the footprints of deceased?”

“About two-thirds of the way to Ghorar Lej. Then they disappeared below high-water mark. Later in the evening I walked from the path into the harbour taking the course by the side of the lagoon , but could not find any further traces of deceased. He must have walked between the tide-marks all the way from the harbour to beyond Hangorer Lej. When these footprints entered the shore near Hangorer Lej, they became mixed up with the footprints of another man, and the shore was trampled for a space of a dozen yards as if a furious struggle had taken place. The strange man’s tracks came down from the Hangorer Lej, and went up it again; but, owing to the hardness of the ground from the dry weather and the boulders, the tracks disappeared a short distance up the path, and I could not find them again.”

“What were these strange footprints like?” inquired the public prosecutor.

“They were very peculiar,” replied the cop. “They were made by shoes armed with  spikes, which were arranged in a triangular-shaped pattern on the holes and in a cross on the heels. I measured the footprints carefully, and made a drawing of each foot at the time.” Here the police officer produced a long notebook of a dull colour, and, having opened it at a marked place, handed it to the public prosecutor, who examined it attentively, and then passed it on to the judge. From the judge it was presently transferred to the defence lawyer, Mr. Haldar who showed it to Dr. Rama Banerjee. I saw a very workmanlike sketch of a pair of footprints with the principal dimensions inserted.

My aunt surveyed the drawing critically, jotted down a few brief notes, and returned the officer’s notebook to the public prosecutor, who, as he took it, turned once more to the officer.

“Have you any clue, officer, to the person who made these footprints?” he asked.

By way of reply the cop opened his carpet-bag, and, extracting therefrom a pair of smart but stoutly made shoes, laid them on the table. These were spiked sports shoes where the spikes were arranged in a pyramid pattern with a cross on the soles.

“Those shoes,” he said, “are the property of the accused; he was wearing them when I arrested him. They appear to correspond exactly to the footprints of the murderer. The measurements are the same, and the spikes with which they are studded are arranged in a similar pattern.”

“Would you swear that the footprints were made with these shoes?” asked Mr. Lahiri.

“No, sir, I would not,” was the decided answer. “I would only swear to the similarity of size and pattern.”

“Had you ever seen these shoes before you made the drawing?”

“No, sir,” replied the police officer; and he then related the incident of the footprints in the soft earth by the pond which led him to make the arrest.

The public prosecutor gazed reflectively at the shoes which he held in his hand, and from them to the drawing; then, passing them to the staff of the judge, he remarked:

“Well, my honour, it is not for me to tell you whether these shoes answer to the description given by Dr. Bhattacharya and the Officer in-charge, or whether they resemble the drawing which, as you have heard, was made by the officer on the spot and before he had seen the shoes; that is a matter for you to decide. Meanwhile, there is another question that we must consider.” He turned to the police officer and asked: “Have you made any inquiries as to the movements of the accused on the night of the murder?”

“I have,” replied the cop, “and I find that, on that night, the accused was alone in the house. Two men saw him in the town about ten o’clock, apparently walking in the direction of Hangorer Path.”

This concluded the Police Officer’s evidence, and when one or two more witnesses had been examined without eliciting any fresh facts, the public prosecutor briefly recapitulated the evidence, and requested the judge to consider his verdict. Thereupon a solemn hush fell upon the court, broken only by the whispers of the substantial crowd who had gathered to witness the rare happening in their locality. I glanced at Amit Sarkar, sitting huddled in his chair, his clammy face as pale as that of the corpse in the mortuary, his hands shaking and his feet incessantly shifting.

The judge retired for a ten minute recess to his room at the back of the court and upon his arrival read out the judgement.

“We find that the deceased met his death by being stabbed in the chest by the accused man, Amit Sarkar. This is a verdict of wilful murder. We will have the next hearing on 29^th September and defence may present fresh evidences before that, failing which the court will announce the sentence.”

The two constables carried the wretched Amit Sarkar in a fainting condition to a closed police van that was waiting outside.

“I was not greatly impressed by the activity of the defence,” I remarked maliciously as we drove back home.

My aunt smiled. “You surely did not expect me to cast my pearls of forensic learning on a first hearing. I wonder no one mentioned the red triangle at the hearing and I did a thorough investigation of the mark during the post-mortem. In fact I hope you have sent it for further tests on the chemicals used at the Central Forensic Lab in Kolkata. ” said she.

“I have. But those results will take at least a month. The next hearing is only a week away. I expected that you would have something to say on behalf of Mr. Sarkar,” I replied. “As it was, his accusers had it all their own way.”

“My dear Avik,” she rejoined, “you do not seem to appreciate the great virtue of what is  called ‘a policy of masterly inactivity’; and yet that is one of the great lessons that a medical training impresses on the student.”

“That may be so,” said I. “But the result, up to the present, of your masterly policy is that a verdict of wilful murder stands against Amit Sarkar, and I don’t see what other verdict the judge could have found.”

“Neither do I , ” said my aunt.

The next five days often found the two women spend most of their time in the make-shift lab, after locking the door from inside.  I was possessed with a consuming desire to pick up crumbs of information from the two women and tried by best to woo Swastika after getting some white wine from Digha accompanied by jumbo prawns, but to no avail. She ate, smiled and then went off to the lab and spoke of everything that took her fancy, apart from the case at hand. The events of the next few days kept me in a positive ferment of curiosity. As to my aunt herself, her proceedings were beyond speculation. From time to time she made mysterious appearances in the bedroom cum Lab window overlooking the garden holding a photo to the light and once I observed Swastika with a paintbrush and a large tumbler trying to paint some stuff lying on the table in the lab.

Wearing track suits the two women used to go out and now and then and once I heard from my maid that they were visiting the fishermen village nearby and was chatting with them late into the evening. Aunt even told me one day that she would be paying a visit to the Police Officer.

“Dr. Rama Banerjee is staying with you, I hear,” said the latter, gazing earnestly at my colleague’s back, which was presented for his inspection at the window.

On the afternoon of the day before the opening of the proceedings we had two new visitors. One of them, a distinguished grey-haired spectacled man was from SSKM, the famed Dr. Sanyal. The other was Kalyan Haldar, the defence lawyer. I saw very little of either of them, however, for they retired almost immediately to the laboratory, where, with short intervals for snacks and tea, they remained for the rest of the day, and, I believe, far into the night. In fact later in the evening they were joined by the Police Officer also. Aunt requested me not to mention the names of her visitors to anyone, and at the same time apologized for the secrecy of her proceedings. I was told to make a proper arrangement for the stay of Dr. Sanyal, which I promptly did at a very good resort on the beach, whose manager was one of my chronic diabetes patients.

“But you are a doctor, Avik,” she concluded, “and you know what professional confidences are; and you will understand how greatly it is in our favour that we know exactly what the prosecution can do, while they are absolutely in the dark as to our line of defence.”

 

The proceedings, which opened on the following day, and at which I was present throughout, need not be described in detail. Mr. Sanyal’s opening statement, however, I shall give at length, inasmuch as it summarized very clearly the whole of the case against the prisoner.

“The case that is now before the Court,” said the public prosecutor, “involves a charge of wilful murder against Amit Sarkar, and the facts, in so far as they are known, are briefly these: On the night of Monday, the 17th of September, the deceased, Biswarup Das, dined with some friends on board the steamer, which belongs to Gour Hari but was taken on lease for a month by one Mr. Jimmy. About midnight he came ashore, and proceeded to walk towards Hangorer Path along the beach. As he entered the long stretch of the shore from the lagoon, a man, who appears to have been lying in wait, and who came down the Hangorer Path, met him, and a deadly struggle seems to have taken place. The deceased received a wound of a kind calculated to cause almost instantaneous death, and apparently fell down dead.

“And now, what was the motive of this terrible crime? It was not robbery, for nothing appears to have been taken from the corpse. Money and valuables were found, as far as is known, intact. Nor, clearly, was it a case of a casual affray. We are, consequently, driven to the conclusion that the motive was a personal one, a motive of interest or revenge, and with this view the time, the place, and the evident deliberateness of the murder are in full agreement.

“So much for the motive. The next question is, Who was the perpetrator of this shocking crime? And the answer to that question is given in a very singular and dramatic circumstance, a circumstance that illustrates once more the amazing lack of precaution shown by persons who commit such crimes. The murderer was wearing a very remarkable pair of shoes, and those shoes left very remarkable footprints in the smooth sand, and those footprints were seen and examined by a very acute and painstaking police-officer, Police Officer Guin, whose evidence you will hear presently. Officer Guin not only examined the footprints, he made careful drawings of them on the spot—on the spot, mind you, not from memory—and he made very exact measurements of them, took photos and all the details have been dutifully documented. And from those drawings and those measurements, those tell-tale shoes have been identified, and are here for your inspection.

“And now, who is the owner of those very singular, those almost unique shoes? I have said that the motive of this murder must have been a personal one, and, behold! the owner of those shoes happens to be the one person in the whole of this district who could have had a motive for compassing the murdered man’s death. Those shoes belong to, and were taken from the foot of, the prisoner, Amit Sarkar, and the prisoner, Amit Sarkar, is the only person living in this neighbourhood who was acquainted with the deceased.

“It has been stated in evidence at the custodial hearing that the relations of these two men, the prisoner and the deceased, were entirely friendly; but I shall prove to you that they were not so friendly as has been supposed. I shall prove to you, by the evidence of the prisoner’s staff, that the deceased was often an unwelcome visitor at the resort, that the prisoner often denied himself when he was really at home and disengaged, and, in short, that he appeared constantly to shun and avoid the deceased.

“One more question and I have finished. Where was the prisoner on the night of the murder? The answer is that he was in a resort little more than half a mile from the scene of the crime. And who was with him in that house? Who was there to observe and testify to his going forth and his coming home? No one. His security of the resort mumbled when questioned and it was apparent that since only two guests were at the resort during that period, they had locked up and gone to sleep after dinner was over. He was alone in the property. On that night, of all nights, he was alone. Not a soul was there to rouse at the creak of a door or the tread of a shoe—to tell as whether he slept or whether he stole forth in the dead of the night. Since he is the owner of the resort, he will have keys to the main lock of the gate.

“Such are the facts of this case. I believe that they are not disputed, and I assert that, taken together, they are susceptible of only one explanation, which is that the prisoner, Amit Sarkar, is the man who murdered the deceased, Biswarup Das.”

Immediately on the conclusion of this address, the witnesses were called, and the evidence given was identical with that at the first hearing. The only new witness for the prosecution was Amit Sarkar’s housekeeping staff, and her evidence fully bore out Mr. Sanyal’s statement. The Police Officer’s account of the footprints was listened to with breathless interest, and at its conclusion the presiding judge—put a question which interested me as showing how clearly my aunt had foreseen the course of events, recalling, as it did, his remark on the night when we were caught in the rain.

“Did you,” the judge asked, “take these shoes down to the beach and compare them with the actual footprints?”

“I obtained the shoes at night,” replied the cop, “and I took them down to the shore at daybreak the next morning. But, unfortunately, there had been a storm in the night, and the footprints were almost obliterated by the wind and rain.”

When the Police Officer stepped down, Mr. Sanyal announced that that was the case for the prosecution. He then resumed his seat, turning an inquisitive eye on Kalyan Haldar and Dr.Rama Banerjee.

The former immediately rose and opened the case for the defence with a brief statement.

“The learned counsel for the prosecution,” said he, “has told us that the facts now in the possession of the Court admit of but one explanation—that of the guilt of the accused. That may or may not be; but I shall now proceed to lay before the Court certain fresh facts—facts, I may say, of the most singular and startling character, which will, I think, lead to a very different conclusion. I shall say no more, but call the witnesses forthwith, and let the evidence speak for itself.”

The first witness for the defence was Dr. Rama Banerjee; and as she entered the box I observed Swastika take up a position close behind her with a large wicker basket. Having been sworn, and requested by the lawyer to tell the Court what she knew about the case, she commenced without preamble:

“About half-past four in the morning of the 17th of September I walked down on the shore with my nephew, Dr. Avik. Our attention was attracted by certain footprints in the sand, particularly those of a man who had landed from a boat, had walked up the coast, and presently returned, apparently to the boat.

“As we were standing there Police Officer, Guin and Dr. Bhattacharya passed down the Ghorar Lej  with two constables carrying a stretcher. We followed at a distance, and as we walked along the shore we encountered another set of footprints—those which the Officer in-charge has described as the footprints of the deceased. We examined these carefully, and endeavoured to frame a description of the person by whom they had been made.”

“And did your description agree with the characters of the deceased?” Mr. Haldar asked.

“Not in the least,” replied my aunt, whereupon the judge, the Police -Officer, and Mr. Lahiri, the public prosecutor laughed long and heartily.

“When we turned into Hangorer Path, I saw the body of deceased lying on the sand close to the cliff. The sand all round was covered with footprints, as if a prolonged, fierce struggle had taken place. There were two sets of footprints, one set being apparently those of the deceased and the other those of a man with spiked shoes of a very peculiar and conspicuous pattern. The incredible stupidity that the wearing of such shoes indicated caused me to look more closely at the footprints, and then I made the surprising discovery that there had in reality been no struggle; that, in fact, the two sets of footprints had been made at different times.”

“At different times!” the judge exclaimed in astonishment.

“Yes. The interval between them may have been one of hours or one only of seconds, but the undoubted fact is that the two sets of footprints were made, not simultaneously, but in succession.”

“But how did you arrive at that fact?” Mr. Haldar asked.

“It was very obvious when one looked,” said Dr. Rama Banerjee. “The marks of the deceased man’s shoes showed that he repeatedly trod in his own footprints; but never in a single instance did he tread in the footprints of the other man, although they covered the same area. The man with the spiked shoes, on the contrary, not only trod in his own footprints, but with equal frequency in those of the deceased. Moreover, when the body was removed, I observed that the footprints in the sand on which it was lying were exclusively those of the deceased. There was not a sign of any spiked-marked footprint under the corpse, although there were many close around it. It was evident, therefore, that the footprints of the deceased were made first and those of the spiked shoes afterwards.”

As Dr. Rama Banerjee paused the judge rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and the inspector gazed at the witness with a puzzled frown.

“The singularity of this fact,” my aunt resumed, “made me look at the footprints yet more critically, and then I made another discovery. There was a double track of the spiked shoes, leading apparently from and back to the Hangorer Path. But on examining these tracks more closely, I was astonished to find that the man who had made them had been walking backwards; that, in fact, he had walked backwards from the body to the boulders bordering the Hangorer  Path, had ascended it for a short distance, had turned round, and returned, still walking backwards, to the face of the small cliff near the corpse, and there the tracks vanished altogether. On the sand at this spot were some small, inconspicuous marks which might have been made by the end of a rope, and there were also a few small fragments of stones which had fallen from the boulders above. Observing these, I examined the surface of the cliff, and at one spot, about six feet above the beach, I found a freshly rubbed spot on which were parallel scratches such as might have been made by the spiked sole of a boot. I then ascended the Hangorer Path, and examined the boulders from the cliff above, and here I found on the extreme edge a rather deep indentation, such as would be made by a taut rope, and, on lying down and looking over, I could see, some five feet from the top, another rubbed spot with very distinct parallel scratches.”

“You appear to infer,” said Mr. Haldar, “that this man performed these tricky performances  and was then hauled up the cliff?”

“That is what the appearances suggested,” replied Dr. Rama Banerjee.

“That same night,” Dr. Rama Banerjee resumed, “I cycled down to the shore, through the Hangorer Path, with a supply of plaster of Paris, and proceeded to take plaster moulds of the more important of the footprints.” (Here the judge, Police Officer Guin, and the public prosecutor with one accord sat up at attention; and I experienced a sudden illumination respecting a certain bowl and kitchen spoon which had so puzzled me on some nights back ) “As I thought that liquid plaster might confuse or even obliterate the prints in sand, I filled up the respective footprints with dry plaster, pressed it down lightly, and then cautiously poured water on to it. The moulds, which are excellent impressions, of course show the appearance of the boots which made the footprints, and from these moulds I have prepared casts which reproduce the footprints themselves.

“The first mould that I made was that of one of the tracks from the boat up to the Hangorer Path, and of this I shall speak presently. I next made a mould of one of the footprints which have been described as those of the deceased.”

“Have been described!” exclaimed the public prosecutor. “The deceased was certainly there, and there were no other footprints, so, if they were not his, he must have flown to where he was found.”

“I will call them the footprints of the deceased,” replied Dr. Rama Banerjee imperturbably. “I took a mould of one of them, and with it, on the same mould, one of my own footprints. Here is the mould, and here is a cast from it.” (She turned and took them from the triumphant Swastika, who had tenderly lifted them out of the basket in readiness.) “On looking at the cast, it will be seen that the appearances are not such as would be expected. The deceased was five feet eight inches high, but was very thin and light, weighing only eighty kilos, as I ascertained by weighing the body, whereas I am five feet six and weigh nearly eighty five kilos. But yet the footprint of the deceased is nearly twice as deep as mine—that is to say, the lighter man has sunk into the sand nearly twice as deeply as the heavier person.”

The audience was now deeply attentive. They were no longer simply listening to the despised utterances of a mere scientific expert. The cast lay before them with the two footprints side by side; the evidence appealed to their own senses and was proportionately convincing.

“This is very singular,” said the judge; “but perhaps you can explain the discrepancy?”

“I think I can,” replied Dr. Rama Banerjee ; “but I should prefer to place all the facts before you first.”

“Undoubtedly that would be better,” the judge agreed. “Pray proceed.”

“There was another remarkable peculiarity about these footprints,” Dr. Rama Banerjee continued, “and that was their distance apart—the length of the stride, in fact. I measured the steps carefully from heel to heel, and found them only nineteen and a half inches. But a man of Biswarup’s height would have an ordinary stride of about thirty-six inches—more if he was walking fast. Walking with a stride of nineteen and a half inches he would look as if his legs were tied together.

“I next proceeded to the area surrounding Hangorer Path, and took two moulds from the footprints of the man with the spiked shoes, a right and a left. Here is a cast from the mould, and it shows very clearly that the man was walking backwards.”

“How does it show that?” asked Mr. Lahiri.

“There are several distinctive points. For instance, the absence of the usual ‘kick off’ at the toe, the slight drag behind the heel, showing the direction in which the foot was lifted, and the deep impression of the sole.”

“You have spoken of moulds and casts. What is the difference between them?” Mr Lahiri quizzed further.

“A mould is a direct, and therefore reversed, impression. A cast is the impression of a mould, and therefore a facsimile of the object. If I pour liquid plaster on a coin, when it sets I have a mould, a sunk impression, of the coin. If I pour melted wax into the mould I obtain a cast, a facsimile of the coin. A footprint is a mould of the foot. A mould of the footprint is a cast of the foot, and a cast from the mould reproduces the footprint. The same way that our sweets are made.”

“Thank you,” said the judge. “Then your moulds from these two footprints are really facsimiles of the murderer’s shoes, and can be compared with these shoes which have been put in evidence?”

“Yes, and when we compare them they demonstrate a very important fact.”

“What is that?”

“It is that the accused’s shoes were not the shoes that made those footprints.” A buzz of astonishment ran through the court, but Dr. Rama Banerjee continued stolidly: “Mr. Amit Sarkar’s shoes were not in my possession, so I went on to the pond next to the shore, on the clay margin of which I had seen footprints actually made by him. I took moulds of those footprints, and compared them with these from the sand. There are several important differences. To facilitate the comparison I have made enlarged photographs of both sets of moulds to the same scale. Now, if we put the photograph of the mould of the prisoner’s right shoe over that of the murderer’s right shoe, and hold the two superimposed photographs , we cannot make the two pictures coincide. They are exactly of the same length, but the shoes are of different shape. Moreover, if we put one of the spikes in one photograph over the corresponding spike in the other photograph, we cannot make the rest of the spikes coincide. But the most conclusive fact of all—from which there is no possible escape—is that the number of spikes in the two shoes are not the same. In Mr. Sarkar’s right shoe there are twenty nine spiked whereas in that of the murderer there are thirty-two. The murderer has three spikes too many. There are other differences also. The spikes of Mr. Sarkar’s shoes measure almost to 13 mm which we found in the clay. Looks to be specialised Javelin shoes and these are very rare. The spikes are arranged in a pyramid fashion with a cross on the sole. In that of the murderer the length of the spikes seems shorter by almost 6mm and the spikes looks to be arranged in a x-mas tree shape – which is not exactly a pyramid. The impressions of Mr. Sarkar’s shoes are much deeper which makes one infer that the spikes are of titanium alloy while the other seems to be a normal track spiked shoe of compressed metal spikes. ”

There was a deathly silence in the court as the Judge and Mr. Lahiri pored over the moulds and the prisoner’s shoes, and examined the photographs. Then the judge asked: “Are these all the facts, or have you something more to tell us?” He was evidently anxious to get the key to this riddle.

“There is more evidence, your Honour,” said Haldar. “The witness examined the body of deceased.” Then, turning to Dr. Rama Banerjee, he asked:

“You were present at the post-mortem examination?”

“I was.”

“Did you form any opinion as to the cause of death?”

“Yes. I came to the conclusion that death was occasioned by an overdose of morphia.”

A universal gasp of amazement greeted this statement. Then the public prosecutor protested breathlessly:

“But there was a wound, which we have been told was capable of causing instantaneous death. Was that not the case?”

“There was undoubtedly such a wound,” replied Dr. Rama Banerjee. “But when that wound was inflicted the deceased had already been dead from a quarter to half an hour.”

“This is incredible!” exclaimed the judge. “But, no doubt, you can give us your reasons for this amazing conclusion?”

“My opinion,” said Dr. Rama Banerjee, “was based on several facts. In the first place, a wound inflicted on a living body gapes rather widely, owing to the retraction of the living skin. The skin of a dead body does not retract, and the wound, consequently, does not gape. This wound gaped very slightly, showing that death was recent, I should say, within half an hour. Then a wound on the living body becomes filled with blood, and blood is shed freely on the clothing. But the wound on the deceased contained only a little blood-clot. There was hardly any blood on the clothing, and I had already noticed that there was none on the sand where the body had lain.”

“And you consider this quite conclusive?” the judge asked doubtfully.

“I do,” answered Dr. Rama Banerjee. “But there was another evidence which was beyond all question. The weapon had partially divided both the aorta and the pulmonary artery—the main arteries of the body. Now, during life, these great vessels are full of blood at a high internal pressure, whereas after death they become almost empty. It follows that, if this wound had been inflicted during life, the cavity in which those vessels lie would have become filled with blood. As a matter of fact, it contained practically no blood, only the merest oozing from some small veins, so that it is certain that the wound was inflicted after death. The presence and nature of the poison I ascertained by analysing certain secretions from the body, and the analysis enabled me to judge that the quantity of the poison was large; but the contents of the stomach were sent to Professor Dr. Sanyal of SSKM for more exact examination.”

“Is the result of Professor Sanyal’s analysis known?” the judge asked Haldar.

“The professor is here, your Honour and his report already submitted to court,” replied Haldar, “and is prepared to swear to having obtained over one grain of morphia from the contents of the stomach; and as this, which is in itself a poisonous dose, is only the unabsorbed residue of what was actually swallowed, the total quantity taken must have been very large indeed.”

“Thank you,” said the judge. “And now, Dr. Rama Banerjee, if you have given us all the facts, perhaps you will tell us what conclusions you have drawn from them.”

“The facts which I have stated,” said my aunt, “appear to me to indicate the following sequence of events. The deceased died about midnight on September 17th, from the effects of a poisonous dose of morphia, how or by whom administered I offer no opinion. I think that his body was conveyed in a boat to the coast near Hangorer Path. The boat probably contained two men, one walked up the path and along the cliff towards Ghorar Lej, and the second, having put on the shoes of the deceased, carried the body along the shore to the end of the shore where the boulders form the path of Hangorer Path. This would account for the great depth and short stride of the tracks that have been spoken of as those of the deceased. Having reached the boulders, I believe that this man laid the corpse down on his tracks, and then trampled the sand in the neighbourhood. He next took off his shoes and put them on the corpse; then he put on a pair of boots or shoes which he had been carrying—perhaps hung round his neck—and which had been prepared with spikes to imitate Sarkar’s shoes. In these shoes he again trampled over the area near the corpse. Then he walked backwards to Hangorer Path, and from it again, still backwards, to the face of the cliff. Here his accomplice, who must have come by climbing the boulders which run along the shore, had lowered a rope, by which he climbed up to the top of the cliff. At the top he took off the spiked shoes, and the two men walked back to the shore, where the man who had carried the rope took his confederate on his back, and carried him down to the boat to avoid leaving the tracks of one more pair of shoes. The tracks that I saw certainly indicated that the man was carrying something very heavy when he returned to the boat.”

“But why should the man have climbed a rope up the cliff when he could have walked up the Hangorer Path?” the public prosecutor asked.

“Because,” replied Dr. Rama Banerjee, “there would then have been a set of tracks leading out of the sea shore without a corresponding set leading into it; and this would have instantly suggested to a smart police-officer—such as Officer Guin—a landing from a boat.”

“Your explanation is highly ingenious,” said the judge, “and appears to cover all the very remarkable facts. Have you anything more to tell us?”

“No, your Honour,” was the reply, “excepting” (here she took from Swastika the last pair of moulds and passed them up to the magistrate) “that you will probably find these moulds of importance presently.”

As my aunt stepped from the box—the judge, public prosecutor and Officer Guin scrutinized the moulds with an air of perplexity; but they were too discreet to make any remark.

When the evidence of Professor Dr. Sanyal (which showed that an unquestionably lethal dose of morphia must have been swallowed) had been taken, the clerk called out the—to me—unfamiliar name of Jiten Majhi. Thereupon walked into the witness-box, an over-sized pair of brown trousers tied to the waist by a worn-out belt, from the upper end of which a fisherman boy’s head and shoulders protruded.

Jiten admitted at the outset that he was a smack-master’s boy, and that he had been “hired out” by his master to one Mr. Jimmy as a cleaning cum deck-hand of the launch Sonar Bangla which is docked at Kolaghat. He is also used to run errands and as a cleaner by Mr. Jimmy for his lodging at Tajpur and for the steamer at the harbour.

“Now, Jiten,” said Haldar, “do you remember Mr. Sarkar coming to the lodging and also on board the steamer?”

“Yes on the steamer. On the night when Mr. Bisworup was murdered. At the lodge maybe a month back.”

“Do you remember what sort of shoes Mr. Sarkar was wearing the first time he came?”

“Yes. They were shoes with a lot of spikes. Have never seen anything like that before. I remember them because Mr. Jimmy made him take them off and put on a rubber pair in his room.”

“What was done with the spiked shoes?”

“Mr. Jimmy took them to his balcony where the shoe racks are there.”

“And did Mr. Jimmy come back to the room directly?”

“No. He stayed in the balcony for about ten minutes.”

“Do you remember a parcel being delivered to your lodging from a Agra shoe-maker?”

“Yes. The courier brought it about fourteen or fifteen days after Mr. Sarkar had been there. It was labelled ‘Mohammed Bros., Boot and Shoe Makers, Agra.’ Mr. Jimmy took a pair of shoes from it, for I saw them on the locker in the steamer the same day.”

“Did you ever see him wear them?”

“No. I never seen them again.”

“Have you ever heard sounds of hammering ?”

“Yes. The night after the parcel came I was cleaning the kitchen after dinner, and I heard someone a-hammering in the balcony.”

“What did the hammering sound like?”

“It sounded like a cobbler a-hammering in nails.”

“Have you over seen any boot-nails or spikes ?”

“No. But I saw these,” he handed over couple of spikes after taking them out of his trouser pocket. “ When I was a-clearing up the room the next morning, I found these on the floor in a corner by the shoe-rack.”

“Were you on board of the steamer on the night when Mr. Biswarup died?”

“Yes. I’d been on the sea, but I came back about half-past nine.”

“Did you see Mr. Biswarup go ashore?”

“I see him leave the steamer. Mr. Jimmy called  me to say: ‘We’re putting Mr. Bisworup on the shore,’ says he; ‘and then,’ he says, ‘we’re a-going for an hour’s fishing. You needn’t sit up,. You can go the lodging and sleep.’ Mr. Bisworup, he looked as if he was drunk. They got him into the boat—and a rare job they had—and Mr. Arpan was in the boat already, he pushed off. ”

“Did they row to the shore ?”

“No. I heard them row round the steamer, and then pull out towards the mouth of the harbour. I couldn’t see the boat, because it was a very dark night.”

“Very well. Now I am going to ask you about another matter. Do you know anyone of the name of Swastika Ma’am ?”

“Yes,” replied Jiten, turning purple.

“Tell us what you know about her,” said Haldar, with a mischievous smile.

“Well,” said the boy, with a ferocious scowl at the bland and smiling Swastika, “one day she come down to the lodging when the gentlemen had gone to sail on the steamer. I believe she’d seen them go. And she offers me Rs.100 to let her see all the boots and shoes we’d got. I didn’t see no harm, so I turns out the whole lot in the shoe-racks for her to look at. While she was looking at them she asks me to fetch a pair of mine from my hut, so I fetched them. When I come back she was putting  the boots and shoes back into the shoe-rack. Then, presently, she nips off, and when she was gone I looked over the shoes, and then I found there was a pair missing. They was an old pair of Mr. Jimmy’s, and what made her steal  them is more than I can understand.”

“Would you know those shoes if you saw them!”

“Yes, I should,” replied the guy.

“Are these the pair?” Haldar handed the boy a pair of dilapidated canvas shoes, which he seized eagerly.

“Yes, these are the ones what she stole!” he exclaimed.

Haldar took them back from the boy’s reluctant hands, and passed them up to the judge’s desk. “I think,” said he, “that if your Honour will compare these shoes with the last pair of moulds, you will have no doubt that these are the shoes which made the footprints from the sea to Hangorer Path and then to Ghorar Lej and back again.”

The judge and the public prosecutor together compared the shoes and the moulds amidst a breathless silence. They also called upon Officer Guin to help in the inspection. At length the judge laid them down on the desk.

“It is impossible to doubt it,” said he. “The broken heel and the tear in the rubber sole, with the remains of the chequered pattern, make the identity practically certain.”

As the judge made this statement I involuntarily glanced round to the place where Jimmy was sitting. But he was not there; neither he, nor Arpan. Taking advantage of the preoccupation of the Court, they had quietly slipped out of the door. But I was not the only person who had noted their absence. The Police Officer and his team  were already in earnest consultation, and a minute later they, too, hurriedly departed.

The proceedings now speedily came to an end. After a brief discussion with his staff and the public prosecutor, the judge addressed the Court.

“The remarkable and I may say startling evidence, which has been heard in this court to-day, if it has not fixed the guilt of this crime on any individual, has, at any rate, made it clear to our satisfaction that the prisoner is not the guilty person, and he is accordingly discharged. Mr. Amit Sarkar, I have great pleasure in informing you that you are at liberty to leave the court, and that you do so entirely clear of all suspicion; and I congratulate you very heartily on the skill and ingenuity of your legal advisers, but for which the decision of the Court would, I am afraid, have been very different.”

That evening, lawyers, witnesses, and the jubilant and grateful client gathered round a truly festive board to dine, and fight over again the battle of the day. But we were scarcely halfway through our meal when, to the indignation of the servants, Police Officer Guin burst breathlessly into the room.

“They’ve gone, Madam!” he exclaimed, addressing my aunt. “They’ve given us the slip for good.”

“Why, how can that be?” asked aunt

“ Yes. Its sad but its true. They had gone off by their steamer to their launch at Kolaghat and that had left the dock before the local police there got wind of it.”

My aunt turned to Mr. Sarkar and said, “ I never questioned you about the Red Delta mark on the forehead on the late Biswarup. Since it did not crop up in the court proceedings I let it go. Now is the time for you to tell us about it. Otherwise, am afraid Police Officer Guin may dig up all the old records and have you arrested again.”

Amir Sarkar was savouring a whisky and on this statement he looked blankly at us, managed to stop his shaking hands to keep the glass on the table and with his two hands clasped his face in a feeling of remorse.

( This is unedited)..

( To be continued )…